Civil Engineering and Architecture 11(4): 1719-1748, 2023 http://www.hrpub.org
DOI: 10.13189/cea.2023.110408
Impacts of Developing Indoor Environmental Quality on
Patients' Health and Occupants' Productivity in
Hospital Buildings
Hossam Elsharkawi
*
, Alaa Mohamed Shams Eldin Eleishy, Ibrahim Rizk Hegazy
Department of Architecture Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Mansoura University, Mansoura 35516, Egypt
Received January 10, 2023; Revised February 24, 2023; Accepted March 19, 2023
Cite This Paper in the Following Citation Styles
(a): [1] Hossam Elsharkawi, Alaa Mohamed Shams Eldin Eleishy, Ibrahim Rizk Hegazy , "Impacts of Developing
Indoor Environmental Quality on Patients' Health and Occupants' Productivity in Hospital Building," Civil
Engineering and Architecture, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 1719 - 1748, 2023. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2023.110408.
(b): Hossam Elsharkawi, Alaa Mohamed Shams Eldin Eleishy, Ibrahim Rizk Hegazy (2023). Impacts of Developing
Indoor Environmental Quality on Patients' Health and Occupants' Productivity in Hospital Building. Civil Engineering
and Architecture, 11(4), 1719 - 1748. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2023.110408.
Copyright©2023 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the
terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License
Abstract Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) in
healthcare buildings indicates the quality level of an
environment of hospital buildings concerning the building
occupants’ health and well-being and of those utilizing the
hospital buildings’ amenities. The quality of the indoor
environment of a hospital buildings is determined by
many aspects, comprising internal natural and artificial
lighting, air quality, damp environments, thermal
conditions, visuality, the comfort of acoustic level, the
approach of emissions-based (low-emission materials),
controlling source, and observing for
occupant-determined contaminants (superior strategies of
indoor air quality), and advanced metrics of natural
lighting (daylight). Occupants and patients inside
hospitals building are often worried about the exposure to
contaminants causing prospective symptoms and health
conditions and dissatisfaction inside hospital buildings
where they perform duties or pay visits. Most of these
concerning symptoms get better when building occupants
are not inside the hospital buildings. Although the
previous studies related to the research context have
addressed some respiratory symptoms and infections that
are associated with damp spaces in hospital buildings, the
concern is still unclear especially since indoor
contaminants’ measurements indicate that occupants and
patients are at risk of disease. In most cases, wherever the
occupants and physicians doubt that the hospital
buildings' environment is affecting the occupants' health
condition, the available information from medical
investigations about the surrounding environment is
unclear and insufficient for establishing which
contaminants are accountable. Despite uncertainty
concerning what to measure and how to explain what is
measured, research shows that the symptoms related to
hospitals are associated with characteristics of buildings
including dampness, sanitation, and ventilation as well.
Therefore, this demand focuses on increasing indoor
quality contaminant and infection levels within hospital
buildings spaces for patients, employees, visitors, and all
occupants, including for differently-abled air and surface
temperature, humidity, air movement, and quality view.
The study highlighted providing better indoor
environmental quality and promoting sustainability for
healthy patient rooms within hospital buildings to face
any prospective pandemic with a minimum negative
impact on buildings’ occupants and Energy Consumption.
Developing internal spaces of hospital buildings with the
proposed parametric design framework in the design stage
will reduce the risk of air pollution exposure, and
infection, and sustain public health.
Keywords Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ),
Healthcare, Well-being, Air Quality, Public Health,
Sustainability, Patient, Energy Consumption